


20 Truths About Scorpius Malfoy

by beachlass



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-13
Updated: 2010-08-13
Packaged: 2017-10-11 02:11:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/107212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beachlass/pseuds/beachlass





	20 Truths About Scorpius Malfoy

20 Truths about Scorpius Malfoy

1\. The grand staircase is the best place in Malfoy Manor to build a pillow fort, because Mother lets him use the velvet curtains from the sitting room, and the house elves stick them to the banisters. When Scorpius comes to stay in the summer, the upper landing is impassable for two weeks, unless you know the password. The summer before Scorpius leaves for Hogwarts, the password is Slytherin, and Asteria lets him sleep in his fort. A portrait of Narcissa, seventeen and wearing her Yule ballgown, keeps watch through the night.

2\. Scorpius likes chickens. His mother thinks it's absurd, but his father assures him that poultry breeding is a perfectly respectable pursuit for landed gentry. Even Grandpapa helps, and it is his wards that keep the coops finally safe from the foxes. Scorpius thinks his Belgian Bantams are good enough to show, and it's not until third year history that he understands why his father laughed until he was bent over the weathered rail fence, tears streaming, when Scorpius wondered if "Pureblood Malfoys" was a good chicken name. When the registration forms come, Draco fills in "House of Black" as the pedigree name, with a malicious twist to his mouth. Auntie is not impressed, but Scorpius loves the portraits of his Grandmama, who was a Black and lets the name stand.

3\. The Malfoy wards protect Scorpius when he is at the Manor. They protect Mother and Father, and Grandpapa is better at wards than anyone, but even he can't change the manor wards. Once you've been in the Manor dungeons, the wards never like you, Father explains, and Scorpius likes the wards, he feels them like a blanket sometimes, but the dungeons give him nightmares.

4\. The chicken coops are far away from Auntie's barns. The creatures Auntie keeps (and animal is never the word used, because everyone is Scorpius' family is precise with their language, and animals aren't what Auntie travels abroad to collect) – the creatures Auntie keeps scare the chickens, and they will stop laying if anyone even goes from the barns to the coops without changing and washing. Scorpius loves the barns, even if they were sometimes a little scary when he was little. He still doesn't like the carriage barn by the pine forest, doesn't like the sound of hooves in a paddock that looks empty, the whisper of the thestral's wings against the stalls. Father and Auntie can see the thestrals, Grandpapa too, but Mother can't, just the same as Scorpius.

5\. Scorpius doesn't know that he was born in Greece, and his birth certificate says Provence. Abigail Greenglass left for the continent with her daughters when her neighbours were killed in a Death Eater raid. The Malfoys arrived shortly after the final battle, and Lucius was greeted by his wife's best friend with a hard slap that echoed in the sun warmed courtyard. Four months later Abigail gave her consent for her youngest daughter, still underage, to marry Draco. It was a gamble, but there was the lineage of pure blood families, recovery from the losing side of a war and an unplanned pregnancy at play. Draco threw up before the service, and Asteria made a joke about transferred morning sickness. She wore a loose gown that obscured her figure, and wasn't seen in public again until she and Draco posed for a portrait with a six month old son.

6\. Scorpius was only three when his second cousin once removed filed a suit contesting the entailed Malfoy estate. Scorpius was named as an illegitimate heir of indeterminate parentage, and a Daily Prophet society reporter made enough money with a series of Draco, Asteria and Scorpius photos to move to Toronto and open a gallery. The Quibbler ignored the lawsuit entirely, and published a Calendar of Fantabulous Beasts based on Luna's travels.

7\. Mother and Father took Scorpius to Diagon Alley for his school supplies, but Auntie took him to Ollivander's for his wand. They had ice cream afterwards with some of Auntie's school friends who had children going off to Hogwarts the same as Scorpius.

8\. Down the platform of 9 ¾ Scorpius recognized the kids from Fortescue's. He rode on the train with them and they traded chocolate frog cards, until Scorpius gave Albus What's-His-Face a fat lip for trading his Auntie's card for one of the stupid Horcrux ones.

9\. Even though his Mother and Auntie were both in Ravenclaw, Scorpius was elated when he is placed in Slytherin. He owled home and to the Manor that night, and had sweets to share with everyone after the morning's owls arrived.

10\. Scorpius wonders sometimes, when his father is muttering to himself about layout and circulation, and smearing ink across his skin, fair stubble barely showing, and oh how Scorpius wishes he needed to shave – Scorpius wonders if the Sorting Hat offered his father the choice between Ravenclaw and Slytherin too.

11\. When Scorpius writes home, if he writes about Quidditch and house points, Father writes back. If he writes about odd things he's learned, or what he and Albus have been doing, Auntie answers.

12\. Scorpius has a temper. It earns him the nickname 'Scorch" by the second week of school, his face flushes red when he gets angry. He spends a week in detention for the fight in the Slytherin common room while working on his family tree assignment for Muggle Studies. He spends a month in detention after the teacher docks him marks for not following the assignment rubric. Unexpectedly, he shares one of those days with Rose Weasley, who stuck up for him when he argued, stuttering, that the rubric didn't fit his family. Scorpius only stutters when he is very angry, and it's never his b's anyway, so his vehement Bitch was clearly heard by the professor. During detention, Rose writes two letters home to her mother and one to the Headmistress. Scorpius doesn't mention it in his letters home, but his father arrives by the week's end, white-lipped and furious.

13\. Scorpius rooms with Albus and studies with Rose and the day that his lined racing gloves go missing it's the sixth year Weasley cousin who spells the tapestries in the Slytherin common room to sing Muggle pop tunes until they are returned.

14\. Scorpius hates history class in fourth year when they begin to study the Voldemort wars in more detail. Scorpius skips meals and loses weight as each class details crimes of his family. Rose finds him crying in one of the upper hallways and they don't speak for two weeks after he yells at her. He gets suspended from the Quidditch team after a fight on the pitch with Albus. Auntie picks him up at the train station for the first time that Christmas, and they avoid the other families and the reporters and go home. He won't speak to Father or Grandpapa, won't go to the Manor for Christmas Eve and spends most of his holiday alone with his chickens or in the barns with Auntie.

15\. On New Year's Day Auntie takes him skating and he's furious when Rose is there with her Mum, but by the time they are red-faced and laughing over hot chocolate Scorpius feels like he can breathe again – white puffs in the night air, watching a couple a little older than he and Rose skate hand in hand and wondering who Albus spent time with over the holidays…

16\. Fifth year history has no contemporary content, and Scorpius is Seeker for Slytherin and they win the House Cup. He spends the summer abroad with Auntie, documenting twelve kinds of obscure tree sprites. Best of all, Scorpius is taller than his father by the time he leaves for Hogwarts.

17\. Two months later, the Malfoy estate case finally goes to trial. The Malfoy barristers come to Hogwarts to coach Scorpius, and by January he is on the stand. Deliberate with Mother's poise and not as arrogant as his father, Scorpius looks every inch the Malfoy heir. Scorpius tells stories about holidays at the Manor with his mother, nights helping his father lay out the Quibbler and afternoon chores with Grandpapa and Auntie. Yes, he has always lived with his father and yes, he has always called Luna Auntie and no, he has never wondered if she was his biological mother. Scorpius knows his family loves him, trusts them and he testifies like he is casting a Patronus. The Wizenmagot rules that there is not enough evidence to require the casting of a matricula revelus spell, and the estate challenge collapses. Scorpius is standing on the court steps with Albus when a shield spell fires beside them. When the sparks clear, Scorpius is face down on the pavement under Albus, and Rose's father has the second cousin once removed in a vicious hold. Albus' father has his wand out and his mouth is twisted looking at Luna. One corner twisted down, just the same way Albus does on prefect duty. House honour before house points when he disciplines Slytherin students.

18\. Scorpius thinks it is all over, and it is, until he is revising for NEWTS with Rose. Albus is down in the Potions classroom teaching the second year tutorial, and Rose is reviewing history notes that Scorpius missed. They have books and scrolls sprawled across their table in the library and Scorpius leans back and stretches in a lean arc. "Can't be right Rose, 'cause I was born 9 months after that, and that can't be when Luna and the others were in the dungeon. 'Cause Father didn't go to Provence till after. They've written down the wrong dates, or Ollivander was confused s'all." Long pale fingers laced overhead, eyes closed and surely Albus will be done soon, Scorpius thinks, and… He tips his head back up and blinks at Rose. She's got a look on her face that he won't see again until his Grandfather's funeral.

19\. Scorpius Malfoy was conceived in a dungeon. The prisoners had never been safe, and Draco wouldn't defy Voldemort, but Theo's father wasn't following orders, he was bragging that he could do whatever he wanted, and that wasn't right, it wasn't what Draco had ever been taught about honour and blood and you didn't treat people like that, not prisoners, not the classmates of your children. And by then Draco couldn't protect himself, couldn't protect others, but had just enough status to claim something as his own, and so he claimed Luna, because maybe he couldn't save himself, or Ollivander, or her in the end, but maybe it wouldn't need to be that. So Draco had slipped down to the dungeons a few nights, carefully noticeable, to pretend that Luna was his. And everyone knew that Malfoys didn't share, and that they were ruthless, and Luna was just a little bit safer. One night, while Ollivander pretended to sleep, desperate pretense between Luna and Draco became desperate comfort. And because nothing ever, ever happened the way that Draco planned, two months after the war, Luna sent an owl with the news that she was pregnant.

20\. The main staircase of Malfoy Manor is a wonderful place for a pillow fort. Cissa is asleep on a large feather pillow just underneath the portrait of her great-grandmother. Scorpius has the proofs of the next issue of the Quibbler spread along the steps. Cissa is shaded from the afternoon sun by a curtain draped across the railings. Albus will be home from the joke shop in time for Scorpius to go to the barns for chores.


End file.
